Introduction

The practice of birdwatching – or birding to use its more modern handle – is a sensory occupation at its most basic; it entails using and exercising natural visual and aural capabilities to their very limits, to observe the appearance and activities of birds in the wild.

But human limitations become apparent very quickly even when you’re ‘in the zone’, and it is obvious that some sort of aid will be needed to get you closer to the animal in question, to record its physical characteristics and sounds, and the time and place that you saw it.

To these ends humans have employed methods both simple and complex, and it is these technological advances that have driven the hobby almost from its very beginnings as observations of bird behaviour by hunters and farmers, often essential to their survival. This book aims to chronologically compile the essential innovations that have built the hobby into the gadget-heavy popular pastime we know today.

From the first daubings of megafaunal fowl that humans left on cave walls to the digital images we now text, email and post to our blogs, and from the first imitative whistle to the compressed blastings of an iPod in the field, birding has often been as much about the advantages given by its contemporary tools as it has the objects of our fascination.

If you find you’re getting ‘fear of the gear’ a little, then take heart. Despite all the gadgetry and paraphernalia, birding is a hobby in which you can start from scratch and teach yourself. The birds themselves have changed relatively little in the time span of the hobby – you really can still just throw binoculars and a book in a bag, and go birding.

David Callahan